One Star Amazon Reviews

After 18 months of tapping and toiling away, I finally pushed my new literary baby into the big wide world.

And the very first review on Amazon?

One star.

(Amazon is being generous here, because you can’t click zero stars.)

Yet I actually punched the air when I saw it … true dinks!

I took it as a good omen, given my last book’s first review was also ‘one star’.

(An employee from my old publisher thought he’d try and generate some buzz, so he wrote my very first review — “great read!” — but then ballsed it up by clicking one star instead of five … and it’s still there today.)

What am I getting at?

We’re living in a hyper-connected, hyper-critical digital age, and you can’t control what people say about you.

Case in point, this week a bloke wrote that he’d seen through my covert operation of writing a book for kids and had unpicked the darker side of what I’m plotting: “He’s just hating on Commbank because they are in the same space he wants to be in … schools.”

Boom!

So, while revelations this week showed that Australia’s largest issuer of credit cards paid Queensland state schools almost $400,000 for the right to sign up school kids, apparently I’m trying to compete with them to sign up kids to … jam jars?

And I’m apparently trying to flog their parents my book … that they can borrow from their school library? (I have donated 10,000 books ‒ one to every school in the country, so parents don’t have to go out and buy it).

Bottom line?

Make peace with the fact that if you’re doing brave things (working hard, starting something, backing yourself), you’re going to make some people uncomfortable. And when it comes, don’t be surprised by criticism. Embrace it. It’s a sign that you’re treading your own path.Tread Your Own Path!P.S Can you please do me a favor?

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